Portraits
How did I become a photographer?
You could say ink runs in my veins.
I was born into a family of printers. My Pap owned a print shop on the Southside of Pittsburgh. Everyone in the family was in the printing industry at one point or another.
As a kid, my parents encouraged creativity and I became an avid artist. At 13 years old, I was using Photoshop v3.0 (layers!) on the weekends when my Dad took me to work with him. I took workshops in graphic arts and pre-press in 8th grade and became a skilled pencil/charcoal portraitist and comic-book artist during High School.
When I picked up a camera in my senior year, I knew I’d found my preferred tool and medium.
After a year of working in a local camera shop, I was off to a 2 year trade school. Before graduating, I was shooting for the 2nd largest newspaper in Southwestern PA and capturing editorial portraits for a handful of local magazines.
For over 20 years, documenting events, capturing portraits, and telling visual stories has been the pursuit of my life, and I’m not stopping anytime soon.
Photo: Me. Just a punk kid in 2002. Shot by a friend before my very first editorial portrait of screenwriter Carl Kurlander for WHIRL Magazine.